Paddling in the wake of the heroes of Admiralty Island
by Paul Rauber
Terrestrial locomotion on Admiralty Island is hard enough for 700-pound Alaskan
brown bears, let alone adventurers carrying canoes on their heads. Walking is
frustrated by dense stands of old-growth hemlock and spruce,
six-foot-tall stinging devil's club, mushrooms as big as pies, and lush thickets
of pie fixin's-huckleberries, melonberries, salmonberries, and blueberries. Bears
blaze their own trails (walking in the depressions left by generations of passing
paws, you feel very small indeed) but they tend to lead from one berry patch to
another. The path of least resistance across the island-for humans, at any
rate-is a wet one.
Our party is commemorating a quarter century of cross-Admiralty canoe trips by
Alaska Discovery, a conservation-minded outfitter born of the struggle to save
this island in southeast Alaska's Tongass National Forest from the chainsaw. A
large percentage of those who have paddled its lakes and saltwater channels seem
to have done so in the company of our veteran guide, Hayden Kaden, who is also
celebrating turning the family business over to his energetic 24-year-old
daughter, Sierra.
We had flown in to Lake Alexander, the easternmost lake, and retrieved five
canoes from a gaggle of giddy and extremely dirty teenagers who had just finished
a weeklong character-building expedition featuring no soap, no toilet paper
(don't ask, I didn't), and food haphazardly chosen at the supermarket the
afternoon before they left. Moral: survival is apparently not such a difficult
affair after all.
For six days we hopscotch from lake to lake through what the Tlingit call
"Khutz-n'hu," Fortress of the Bear, a land of orthographic as well as biological
diversity. We time our passage of "Kootznahoo" Inlet to miss the tidal rush that makes
it a Class III rapid. The blessed solitude we enjoy is guaranteed by the "Kootznoowoo"
Wilderness, established in 1980 after President Jimmy Carter proclaimed Admiralty
a national monument two years earlier. And early miners dubbed the island's
moonshine "Hoochinoo likker," or hooch.
While some of the lakes are connected by pleasant waterways, where navigation is
impeded only by a profusion of giant water lilies, others require portages
ranging from a couple hundred yards to three and a half miles. Luckily, in the
latter case we have an extra set of canoes stashed at the far end, so we don't
have to hump our boats over the mountain. We rely on the portage trails
constructed by Carter's Youth Conservation Corps and the old Civilian
Conservation Corps before it: sturdy cedar planks laid in the muck, winding
through the giant trees.
Had it not been for Carter-and a crucial lawsuit by the Sierra Club-we would have
been walking on logging roads through an old-growth forest logged to the
waterline. Instead, thanks to yesterday's conservation victory, we can take our
place in a vital world. Bald eagles abound, striking patriotic poses in snags.
Chum bump the bottoms of our canoes in their insane upstream urges, and Dolly
Varden leap shimmering into our waiting tortillas. Midsummer bear are scarce,
which is fine by us. Writer Frank Dufresne tells of watching an old Admiralty
griz gorge on salmon one summer's day, and then-for no apparent reason-attack and
demolish a large tree stump. He asked his guide for an explanation. "The
grizzly's mad," the local declared, "because he ain't got nothing to be mad
about."
Our last camp is on Mitchell Bay, only nine miles from the Tlingit village of
Angoon, Admiralty's sole settlement. Even so, humans are still curiosities here.
Huffing harbor porpoises cut perfect arcs through the tidal waters in the crisp
evening air, while snooping seals eye us, trying to divine the attraction of
bipedalism. Otters slide off rocks at our approach. Above it all soars Raven, the
totem of one of the great lineages of the island, performing acrobatic half-rolls
and dives for the pure fun of it. We lounge in the long twilight, relaxing sore
muscles, eating crackers and salmon, and drinking high-grade hooch. Better the
joy of Raven than the choler of Bear. An earlier generation of conservationists
saved Admiralty Island, and thanks to them, we ain't got nothing to be mad about.
